First-year medical students at UCLA were forced to attend a bizarre lecture by a pro-Hamas activist who had them pray to “Mama Earth” while a faculty member tried to identify a student who refused to do so.
Lisa Gray-Garcia gave the two-hour presentation on March 27 in Geffen Hall, on the university’s downtown Los Angeles Campus, the The free beacon of Washington reported.
The lecture was a required part of the Structural Racism and Health Equity course that all future doctors were required to take, taught by pediatrician Lindsay Wells.
Gray-Garcia calls herself a “poverty skola,” keeps her face covered with a keffiyeh except in a few interviews, and called the October 7 Hamas attack “justified.”
Students were instructed to touch the floor with their fists while saying a “non-secular” prayer to “mama Earth” and our “ancestors,” according to a complaint.
Lisa Gray-Garcia gave the two-hour presentation on March 27 in Geffen Hall, on the university’s campus in downtown Los Angeles
Footage from the lecture, in which Gray-Garcia kept her face covered
“Mama Earth was never meant to be bought, sold, pimped or played,” Gray-Garcia said during the prayer, part of which was recorded by a student.
She claimed that private property was a “crapitalist lie” that was killing “black, brown and homeless” people forced to live on the streets.
Gray-Garcia, who grew up homeless from the age of 11 with her single mother, denounced anti-homeless campaigns during another part of the lecture.
“Not only are our bodies considered unclean in public, not only are our lives criminalized for being outside without access to a roof, but politicians are also using us for their campaigns,” she said.
“$30 million was spent removing our homeless bodies… because they were turning people into trash.
She asked the students to consider how many houses could be built with that money “even at these inflated, ridiculous prices of the commodified Mama Earth.”
Gray-Garcia’s lecture was titled ‘Housing (In)justice in LA: Addressing Unhousing and Practicing Solidarity’, but also addressed the crisis in Gaza.
At one point, she led students in singing “Free, Free Palestine” as UCLA faculty, including Dr. Wells, watched in silence.
During a second call for students to kneel on the ground, someone refused. An unidentified member of the UCLA faculty reportedly inquired about the student’s name, raising fears that they could face repercussions if they refused to comply with Gray-Garcia’s bizarre diktat.
The lecture was a mandatory part of the Structural Racism and Health Equity course that all future doctors must take, given by pediatrician Lindsay Wells (photo)
It is unclear how much Gray-Garcia was paid for the lecture. UCLA charges medical students fees of about $44,000 per year, while the additional fees bring the total required to train there to $84,000 per year.
Gray-Garcia denounced Israel just hours after Hamas killed 1,200 people on October 7 and expressed support for Palestine, but none for the murdered Israelis.
“As we hold our relatives in occupied Palestine and all of MamaEarth in prayer and love, we must make the connections,” she wrote on Twitter.
“For us, homeless, indigenous, wiped out/evicted people – we are not separate from this struggle – we suffer the same colonial terror.”
Then on November 1 she wrote: “To stand up after decades of brutal policing, killing and terrorizing is not ‘terrorism’, it is justice.”
Gray-Garcia has also previously called Israel ‘amerikkiklan’, referring to the KKK.
Later in the lecture, she called modern medicine “white science” and called North America occupied “Turtle Island” and said they were in “what the colonists call LA.”
She often calls cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco by their Native American names, calling them “occupied.”
Gray Garcia at a pro-Palestine event wearing the face covering she always gasses in public
Near the end of the lecture, Gray-Garcia told the students to stand for a second prayer, which all but a few did.
“Of those in attendance, a handful of students who were visibly uncomfortable refused to participate and remained seated the entire time,” UCLA’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group wrote in a complaint.
“At that time, a UCLA staff member inquired about the identity of a retained medical student, potentially singling him out for disciplinary action.
“The net effect was that UCLA staff intimidated first-year medical students into participating in a religious service that conflicted with their own personal beliefs.”
